Tuesday, December 29, 2015

No charge in Cleveland. No guilt in Chicago? Problem remains the same

There
are people now peeved in Cleveland, what with the fact that prosecutors along
the Cuyahoga River think that the shooting death of a 12-year-old boy by police
officers is not murder.

Another ugly scene headed Tuesday. Although when is the Criminal Courts Building ever a pleasant place to be?

I’m
sure it will be their ideological cousins in Chicago who will be gathered
outside the Criminal Courts Building on Tuesday when Jason Dan Dyke shows up in
court and either he or his attorney says the words they don’t want to hear.

“NOT
GUILTY. YOUR honor.”

For
it will be the Chicago cop’s arraignment in which he and his attorneys will
begin the process of fighting back against the people who have spent the past
month with the videotape that they say shows Van Dyke killing a 17-year-old in
cold blood.

Even
though the video shows the gunfire coming from off-screen. It is other
testimony in combination with the video that led the Cook County state’s attorney
deciding they could charge the cop with a criminal charge – six counts of
murder, to be specific.

Which
is what people in Cleveland wanted to happen to two police officers who were
involved in the shooting death of Tamir Rice – who was killed when police
mistook the pellet gun he pulled from his waistband and pointed at them for a
weapon that could have caused them bodily harm.

OF
COURSE, THE activists in Cleveland are arguing that police should not have
cared about such an act, and should have realized it was coming from a child.
Which kind of reminds me of an old “Hill Street Blues” episode in which one of
the often-noble Hill Street officers shot and killed a boy who pulled out a toy
pistol at the wrong time.

Laquan could easily be ...

That
cop was supposedly traumatized and the episode told of how his act ultimately
devastated his career.

But
the modern-day reality may be that some people were so eager to point out the
legal justification for the two officers in Cleveland that they’re too willing
to ignore the loss of a child’s life.

And
some may also be willing to accept the acts of Van Dyke, whose attorneys told
the Washington Post about how they intend to punch holes in the credibility of
the video because it lacks audio.

PARTICULARLY
OF THE information that police were provided during all those moments of
driving in the squad car prior to encountering Laquan McDonald. Meaning they
may really have seen him as some sort of major threat, particularly when he
tried to get away from them on first encounter.

... Tamir's Chicago 'cousin'

Which
activists like to think was McDonald trying to walk away from a conflict. But I
am aware that the law gives police the legal right to stop people. That and the
dinky blade could wind up providing some sort of legal justification.

I
bring this up because I remain suspicious of those who want to believe this is
such an open-and-shut legal case – one in which the officer will someday find
his head being stuffed into a jail cell toilet bowl while being sodomized.

A
grotesque image, but one I’m sure some people would take perverse pleasure out
of its occurrence.

YET
IT WILL be a long legal fight either way. Take the Washington Post, which
recently did reporting about police violence in this country and found that
during the past year, there were at least 975 people shot to death by police
officers.

Only
eight ever got charged with a crime. Which truly puts Van Dyke in rarified air if
he was one of the few so over-the-top outrageous that he couldn’t escape a
criminal indictment.

We’ll
have to wait and see what ultimately happens with Van Dyke, who during his 14
years as a Chicago police officer had some 20 complaints filed against him –
complaints that he somehow managed to be cleared of in all cases.

Although
in one aspect, it doesn’t matter. Regardless of the verdict of some future
jury, both Laquan and Tamir are dead – cut short before the prime of their
lives was even close to coming.

I am a Chicago-area freelance writer who has reported on various political and legal beats. I wrote "Hispanic" issues columns for United Press International, observed up close the Statehouse Scene in Springfield, Ill., the Cook County Board in Chicago and municipal government in places like Calumet City, Ill., and Gary, Ind. For a time, I also wrote about agriculture. Trust me when I say the symbolic stench of partisan politics (particularly when directed against people due to their ethnicity) is far nastier than any odor that could come from a farm animal.